GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Learning to interpret RTA

Post Subject: Thank you for giving me ideas on RTAPosted by zanon on: 6/11/2010

Thank you all for your ideas and suggestions on RTA.

Romy -- you are correct, measurements always need to be made in context of sonic experience and more importantly musical intention. For me, though, to begin the process, I need to unlearn much of what is written about measurements. For example -- I have anechoic reading of my system (san subwoofer) from magazine, and my in-room, seating measurement looks completely different. So what is point of anechoic reading if it does not match real life situations?? Is targeting such a graph the wrong approach? I now feel that it is, especially for LF. I do not know what "time summation" is -- I will do research to find out what you mean.

Jessie -- yes. It took me forever to find a way so that I could run my sub high enough to get my mid-bass, while still keeping it integrated with the overal presentation. The most interesting thing I am learning from his is how to understand my sound in the context of the room. You need to know which string to push on!

Scooter -- yes. I read Romy's piece on his straight line but tilted towards bass slightly to make up for his old small room. I thought that since my room was larger, I would want to run flatter line but I was totally wrong. My line is more tilted than Romy's, it is the only way to bring back musical information at LF.

Your warnings in digital EQ are well taken. I also know that Jessie has had good results using dEQ at very low frequencies. I also like Romy's test where you introduce dEQ at very slight level, and then hear what it does to the content. All of this "tweaking" is within the context of objectives, and mine are not the same as Romy's, the degradation which comes from dEQ may or may not be worth it depending on whether I am getting closer or farther from what I am trying to say. Nevertheless, the big revelation to me has been how, if one was to use dEQ, it should not be to "flatten the line" so the picture is more pretty, but to see if you can, net of degradation, move closer to your objective irregardless of how the line looks (and I think the line is a good place to get ideas etc.) Of course it may be a complete dead end and degradation is so complete that you decide you cannot get there from here and pursue another avenue.

Paul S -- the ear targetting was how I managed to get HF improved. I don't love it because it seems to be opposite to DPols and "playing the room" but of everything I tried it had success. That was how I began my journey on room interaction and ignoring hardware (at least for now). That and focus on CP vs JS Bach.

When you talk of "electronic attentuation or amplification of certain frequencies" do you mean dEQ?

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